Enigmatic Variations

1 Sep 2008, 1:00am

Elgar won’t help you here.
‘Enigmatic Variations barred cryptic crossword’ is hard enough to say let alone describe a formula for. It really is the most paradoxical, perplexing and utterly baffling crossword on the block. Just as music enthusiasts have spent almost a century trying to fathom the hidden meanings behind Elgar’s Enigma Variations, so might one spend a century trying to explain this complicated puzzle. Here’s the predicament: the rules seem to keep changing.

Crafty compilers
Looking back over past puzzles you can see common threads, for example: they all use a grid with boundaries denoted by thick lines called "bars". and they all have cryptic clues. What’s so tricky about that we hear you all cry? Ha ha! Just listen to those canny compilers chuckling into their dictionaries.

Puzzling it out
Each Enigmatic Variations crossword is just what it says it is – a variation on a theme. The compiler gives additional specific instructions for each crossword, adding a level of complexity and varying the original clues . One clue, but usually more, will require modification to fit into the grid. Letters might need to be dropped or added; or be anagrammed to fit other unmodified clues. The spaces without clues may spell out a secret message appropriate for the puzzle theme once the puzzle is fully solved.

If that is as clear as mud, then take a look at the following example showing puzzle no. 825 “High Exaltation” by Hypnos.

To mark an occasion, four answers have to be treated in accordance with the title of a work by an exalted figure. Extra letters in the subsidiary indication to ten clues reveal the title treated by itself followed by a set of initials. A second work must be highlighted in the grid. A third work to be deduced from resolving clashes in some answers (leaving only the real words) using the rejected letters must be written beneath the grid.

As you can see, the solution to this one is not Elgar but another composer, Vaughan Williams. The puzzle celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Ralph Vaughan Williams who died on August 26, 1958. Extra letters from wordplay in ten clues reveal KRALEHT, i.e. THE LARK ASCENDING, and the initials RVW. Synonyms of lark in four down answers, REDEPLOY, RAGA, FAIR GAME and SEMANTIC, must be treated accordingly. Letters not used in the clashes arranged to HODIE - another composition. Exaltation is the collective noun for larks.

The Solution:

If you can’t see how this solution plays out or you are almost there but not quite, then don’t despair, help is at hand. There is a blog you can join dedicated to solving the Enigmatic Variations.